One of the greatest of all British male stars, tall, dark and saturnine James Mason began as a stage actor after reading architecture at Cambridge, making his professional debut with a rep company in Croydon before being taken on by Tyrone Guthrie at the Old Vic in 1933 to play a useful range of roles.

He entered films with 1935's newspaper thriller, Late Extra (d. Albert Parker), and, once his film career gathered momentum, he rarely appeared on the stage again, with a 1954 season at Stratford, Ontario, as exception. He owed his film start to the legendary American, UK-based agent, Al Parker, who 'discovered' him in 1935 and represented him till he, Parker, died, after which his widow, Margaret Johnston, took over the agency and Mason.

In the 1930s he made about a dozen mostly forgotten films, though given a chance to glower handsomely in, say, The Mill on the Floss (d. Tim Whelan, 1937), or to be the heroine's sensitive protector in Hatter's Castle (d. Lance Comfort, 1941)...[read more]